Philosophy in the Ruins (Front Porch Republic)
A preview of my recent article in Front Porch Republic considering the anti-philosophical currents in our institutions and what can and cannot be done about it.
This is a preview of an essay I wrote for Front Porch Republic. Front Porch Republic is an American online publication about localism, culture, politics, and conservation.
This essay considers the anti-philosophical (i.e., philistinic) currents which pervade contemporary American institutions and what actions are necessary to combat them.
I wrote it largely in response to another essay written by New York City playwright
in American Affairs this summer. In his essay, Matthew attempts to identify obstacles to the development of an authentic, intellectually substantial American culture in the 21st Century. It is well worth the read.One facet of his criticism stuck out to me in particular: he pointed out how all the anons on Twitter/X reiterating symbols of a version of the past they deem more culturally vigorous than our own are doing only that: reiterating symbols. They are not producing a culture. They are not putting forth the intellectual and artistic work necessary to generate real excellence.
“A high-culture simulacrum isn’t a high culture,” he wrote. “‘Trad’ aesthetics, therefore, won’t fix anything, won’t produce an American renaissance.”
In my own piece, I relate this phenomenon to John Kennedy Toole’s absurd protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly in his hilarious novel “A Confederacy of Dunces.” I also tie in Walker Percy’s concept of the ‘age of the theorist-consumer’ to suggest how, at least in part, our culture got the way it is. Finally, I pull from Percy’s novels to argue no big solution can be effective if those disposed to thinking and writing do not take the “Little Way” and themselves make the sacrifices necessary to produce the thought and art a flourishing culture requires.
Again, below is only a preview. You can read the full essay here:
Months ago, I embarked on a lengthy essay intended to convince people who are indifferent, or even hostile, that philosophy is a necessary human activity. Only upon further reflection have I determined this was futile.
For one, those much older and wiser than myself have presented the case for philosophy many times already before, and their arguments have been sound. St. John Paul II, in his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio, reiterated the assertion of Aristotle that human beings naturally long for answers to philosophical questions. “It is the nature of the human being to seek the truth,” he wrote. “This search looks not only to the attainment of truths which are partial, empirical, or scientific; nor is it only in individual acts of decision-making that people seek the true good. Their search looks toward an ulterior truth which would explain the meaning of life.”
And, as he spoke to the innate longing for philosophy in the human heart, G.K. Chesterton reminded us that we all live downstream of philosophizing, whether done well or poorly: “Philosophy is merely thought that has been thought out. It is often a great bore. But man has no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out.” If man has no philosophy, Chesterton argued, he is left only to react to sensation and meaningless words and, therefore, is totally unequipped to deal with the complexity of the world in which he lives.
Yet, despite these perfectly reasonable defenses of philosophy (and many more), masses of people today seem not to care. In America (and I only assume it is the same in other English-speaking countries), there seems to be not only a widespread distrust of philosophy but an annoyance with it. On the surface, there exists a general hodge-podge of pragmatism, relativism, and skepticism that deems philosophy unnecessary, but below there is an undercurrent of frustration, sometimes even hostility, toward any careful and coherent philosophy.
Unfortunately, though deep down we all might want to know and live by the truth, sometimes we want other things more. We pursue those things even if that comes at truth’s expense. Only he who is already a philosopher (a “lover of wisdom,” etymologically speaking) makes the truth sovereign over all his other desires, as Plato taught in his Republic. This is what distinguishes the philosopher from other kinds of men. The philosopher loves the truth more than anything else, whereas other men love praise, money, pleasure, or power. They are not unphilosophical because they have alternative philosophies. They are unphilosophical because they have alternative objectives.
In Plato’s great allegory for the philosophical life, it is the philosopher who stumbles out of the cave by will or by fate and sees things as they really are. But when he returns to tell everyone else about his wonderful discovery, they ridicule him. They are content with the shadows on the wall. At least they think they are.
This is why philosophical arguments fail to gain a wide hearing: the very people who need to be convinced by them aren’t going to listen. Sufficient arguments are, after all, themselves philosophical. And this unphilosophical sentiment—call it philistinism—is nothing new. Socrates himself, Plato’s beloved teacher and main character in most of his dialogues, was forced to take hemlock by Athenians who disapproved of his method of philosophical questioning. Nor is it a rarity. All civilizations in human history have had their fair share of philistines. In numbers, they have likely far surpassed philosophers.
But common though they may be, they have not always been in control of society’s institutions. We know this because, in the past, there have been education systems (including universities) primarily dedicated to teaching the liberal arts. There have been serious artistic productions—poetry, theater, novels, and even films—and gatekeepers capable of distributing the best literature to a large audience who enjoyed it. There was at one time an aspiration for transcendent beauty that pervaded art, music, and architecture. There were generational myths and folktales, sacred rituals, standards of morality and excellence, and, in politics, an expectation of civility and statesmanship.
Today, however, things are quite different. The primary objective of education is to manufacture employees. Popular literature aims at sensation or propaganda or often both. People spend more time on Instagram, TikTok, or watching YouTube than they do reading books. Contemporary art feels nihilistic or utilitarian. Younger generations care very little about preserving the stories and traditions of the generations that came before them, relativism hinders moral and aesthetic discourse, and politics has become nearly synonymous with demagoguery and scandal.
But why is this the case? What gave our institutions over to the philistines and rendered our culture so particularly noxious to the philosophical way of life? I’m sure there are many reasons—technological, economic, and ideological—but perhaps uniting all these is a more general spirit that now prevails. Shortly before he died of prostate cancer in his home in Covington, Louisiana, in 1990, the Catholic novelist (and dare I say philosopher) Walker Percy boldly declared that “The old modern age has ended. We live in a post-modern as well as a post-Christian age which as yet has no name.” So, he gave it a name. He called it “the age of the theorist-consumer.”
L.W. Blakely is a writer in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of The Wayfarer, a newsletter where he publishes literary fiction, criticism, and musings. Learn more about L.W. and The Wayfarer on the About page, or (if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read) consider subscribing and sharing his work.